This headache's a killer, you've felt it coming for days now. Well, it's here, and rubbing your eyes isn't doing any good so...
The rain falls in thick sheets, cut through with nauseating neon lights and smoke only a shade more noxious.
This is/was your home, though with how things have been going lately, you hardly recognize it anymore. There's trouble in the wind and on the wires, and their steady hum now sets your nerves on edge instead of calming them. You are (???), and somehow you feel like you're going to need every favor, trick, and scrap of knowledge you've got to get through whatever's coming

*CLASS SELECTION!*
You are :

A. A DodecaDeacon of The Machine Mind
The Machine Mind mandates that there be One Truth and Zero Falsehood. As a twelfth-level initiate, it is your job to spread the Truth and root out Falsehood. That's the official line anyway. You've found the world a little less binary.

B. A Hacker
Coder, cutter, cracker. There's many names for what you do, but only one result: success. You've made a name for yourself on the wires by freeing heavily secured information. Other things, you've found, are unfortunately much harder to free.

C. A Breaker
Sometimes (a lot of times) cracking skulls is easier than cracking code. That's where all seven feet of you (heavily augmented of course) comes in. You're more than a match for any punk who tries to cross you, but some things just might might break you before you break them.

D. ???
There are things in the dark, things that decency (and heavily armed corpsec) demands hide their faces in shadow and names in static. You happen to be one of them.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at Sep 17, 2017 around 12:08

Hi, this is Woven Wires, a cyberpunk thing. If you like:
Computers!
Guns!
Internet!
and/or

Horrors created by the unrestrained exponential growth of private capital and technology! (and lots of gifs!)
Then this is the place for you!

Some notes: This is my first cyoa, so be ready for some rough edges. I expect to update a few times a week, with a lot of activity at the start as we flesh out our main character. I'm running this off my own homebrew so most things are gonna be under the hood. You'll see your choices, and then their consequences, which should be a lot more fast and fun than minmaxing and juggling numbers. Options will be in bold. Everyone is welcome to both vote and discuss options, even if you haven't been here from the start. For our first vote, We're finding out who we are! Also whether we hung around our hometown or are only now returning.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at Sep 17, 2017 around 19:29

You... we are... I am? Ugh, this headache makes you feel like your memory buffers are overflowing. Do I even have memory buffers? Your neural architecture is a bit hazy at the moment, maybe a diagnostic would get your meat and metal on the same page. What you can remember right now comes in flashes: a gun in your hand, crumpled bodies in SinDex uniforms, the grey walls walls walls walls wallswallswalls

You're on the street. You shouldn't be on the street. You shouldn't be on the street at all, especially in a maxsec issue jumpsuit after curfew. If you're lucky, you'll get locked up (again). More likely you'll get hacked up and spread over several "used parts" bins by some slicer gang looking for easy money. You need to go somewhere, anywhere but here:

A. Go Home
You lived here, once. Third stop on the subway, around the corner, up the stairs, and through an unmarked steel door behind the Soya Shack. Of course you no longer have a transport pass or your keys, but you'll manage.

B. Make Contact
Someone put that gun in your hand and pointed you at Sindex. If you made it out, you were supposed to head to The Shard and ask for a copy of "Windows 2077". Maybe you were set up, maybe the info's long since expired, but it's all you have to go on.

C. Get Fixed
You're quite fond of your genitals, thank you, but you could do without this headache. Plenty of front, back, and side alley techdocs could sort you out, for a price. You have a few credits left in your account, but a complicated fix could end up (literally) costing you an arm and a leg.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at Sep 17, 2017 around 21:38

You close your eyes and concentrate. In your mind you reach toward the switch on the wallwallswallswallswalls

You come to gasping on the pavement. The few people scattered around know better than to look at you, much less help you up. You're just another stimhead crashing out, or a convenient distraction hired by the pickpockets.

B. Make Contact
Someone put that gun in your hand and pointed you at SinDex. If you made it out, you were supposed to head to The Shard and ask for a copy of "Windows 2077". Maybe you were set up, maybe the info's long since expired, but it's all you have to go on.

In the past few decades, concrete, steel, and glass have seemed ever more fragile in the face of neglect and recurring nanoplagues. If you were a well to do corp and didn't want your fancy flagship building to have holes eaten in it or collapse in ten years, you had to look to something new. For Paragon Tech, that was supposed to be a revolutionary fast growing monocrystal. A building that would not only build itself, but would also be "Durable as Diamond!". The tagline didn't hold up. There was a mistake in the grow lattice, or a fluctuation in crystallization conditions, something accidental (or deliberate) that created a massive fault line in the structure. On the day of its grand unveiling the Shard was tested, and shattered. The resulting rents in surrounding buildings, pavement, people, and Paragon's profits led to investors pulling out, and the site, with its tower remnant, being abandoned.

Still, real estate is real estate, and the prospect of a glittering fortress ended up being too appealing to resist. Various gangs and grey market groups have moved in since, and the Shard now serves as the center for illicit activity in NuYork. As long as you're willing to work around a worrying amount of monomolecular edges, there's no better place to go if you need something shady.

On your way to the door, you catch a reflection in one of The Shard's facets:
Ugh, who gets face augs?

...

That's my face!
That's not my face!!

The realization jerks you to a halt. You frantically paw at "your" face and pat yourself down:

You Have:
2 arms (meat?)
2 legs (meat?)
1 head (now hurting even more) (metal?)
1 maxsec jumpsuit (paper, the ID U0lOR0VS is written across the chest and back over a bar code)
1 anonymous 500 credit chit
1 pistol (surprised, you surreptitiously take it out and check it. It's a one and done: tiny lovely flashmolded plastic body, fused propellant charge, ceramic bullet. Undetectable to scanners and small enough to escape a cursory search)

Shaken, you continue on into The Shard. You easily find a software dealer on a lower level and ask him if he has Windows 2077.

"That's abandonware Gramps. You want it you can go pull it off a dead board on the wires."

Do you:

A. Keep pushing (write in)
B. Find someone more knowledgeable
There's plenty more software dealers in The Shard. A few even specialize in outdated tech.

C. Find someone more important
No two bit software pirate's gonna take on a corp, no matter how much they hate DRM. Look for someone who would and could.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at Sep 18, 2017 around 10:57

B. Find someone more knowledgeable
There's plenty more software dealers in The Shard. A few even specialize in outdated tech.

You ask around about which vendor's got the best collection of deadtech. Most seem willing to indulge old man in a prison jumpsuit, though a few look at you oddly or say nothing at all. What they do tell you, is "down"

The room is dimly lit by scrolling data on large screens. You can't make heads or tails of any of it. Your host(?) sits in the middle of it all, staring out of her(?) monitor at you with blank eyes.There doesn't seem to be anyone else present.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at Sep 18, 2017 around 15:42

You clutch your head for a minute until it only feels like it's getting stomped on by a loading mech. You can just about manage speech now, but decide not to chance it for a bit longer. You settle on waving her off, then straighten.

...
"What I need is a copy of Windows 2077"

The scrolling data flickers for an instant.

"My, you're certainly a collector! I have one copy of MᴀᴄʀᴏMɪᴄʀᴏsᴏғᴛ Wɪɴᴅᴏᴡs 2077 Hᴏᴍᴇ Eᴅɪᴛɪᴏɴ in stock for ᴛᴡᴏ ᴛʜᴏᴜsᴀɴᴅ credits. New in box!"

You have 500 credits

poo poo
You:
A. Leave and don't come back
You don't have that kinda cash. If you did, you wouldn't blow it on some dumb antique older than you.

B. Leave and raise funds
You could work part time at a Soya shack for a few weeks and save up... or do a few "odd jobs"... or just mug some poor gently caress. There's always a way to get creds.

C.Bargain
Maybe you could trade in your gun for store credit? There don't seem to be surgical facilities anywhere nearby but you could certainly try to throw in a limb or two as well. Or just try a few good old fashioned negotiating tactics to knock the price down.

The questions worm their way into your head, where they twi-
st into a swirl of voices. You steady yourself and take a deep breath.

Here goes:"I'm fighting! I'm fighting to stay myself. Fighting for a cause I don't remember signing up for but that I know is right! Fighting to push back the doubts and fears and loving brain eating parasites that want to leave me huddled over muttering in a dark corner somewhere!"

The screens go blank once more, only to be refilled with flowing data.

Your host stares at you, unfazed.
After a pause, she speaks:

"ғɪɢʜᴛ with me. Surrender your ғʟᴀᴡs and be made ᴡʜᴏʟᴇ and sᴛʀᴏɴɢ. You will be a weapon of ᴡɪʟʟ and ᴍɪɢʜᴛ. I offer an ᴇᴍᴘʟᴏʏᴇᴇ ᴅɪsᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ and a ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴇᴛɪᴛɪᴠᴇ ʙᴇɴᴇғɪᴛs ᴘᴀᴄᴋᴀɢᴇ."

You have your doubts, but your host's offer is too tempting. She's promising you something other than crashing augs and petty crimes. She's promising a chance to fight, and win.

"Alright. Now about the benefits pack-"

Thick cables whip from the gloom. They pause, seeming to hesistate...
only to split and then split again, becoming hair fine as they plunge toward you!

They don't stop when they reach your skin, burrowing deeper into your flesh, into your n̨̡̠̱̩̠̉̓͂̈́ͣ̐͞e̡̝̬͍̼̼̼ͪͬ̾̒̋̕͠r̷͕̯͍̪̝̥̘̗̥̓̈̑ͬ̌͟v̶̛̛̹̗̱͛̊͗̎̓̋e̯̙̲̘͕͎̜̔̏́͝ś̗̠̬͈̗̤ͬ́

But your focus is elsewhere, as more fine wires(?) come ever closer to your eyes
They slip in and around, and the inside of your head w̸͕̱̣̒̂̀͞r̢̰̫̗͔̙̠̞̘̈́̓̓i̺ͫ͋̾ͧͯ̚͞t̢͖ͣ̐͛ͫ̉͊́̕h̢̢͙̻ͨ̐ͦ̽̿e̠͌ͮͨ͌ͯs̶̛̖͈̩ͮ̂ͭ͞

You have your doubts, but your host's offer is too tempting. She's promising you something other than crashing augs and petty crimes. She's promising a chance to fight, and win.

"Alright. Now about the benefits pack-"

Thick cables whip from the gloom. They pause, seeming to hesistate...
only to split and then split again, becoming hair fine as they plunge toward you!

They don't stop when they reach your skin, burrowing deeper into your flesh, into your n̨̡̠̱̩̠̉̓͂̈́ͣ̐͞e̡̝̬͍̼̼̼ͪͬ̾̒̋̕͠r̷͕̯͍̪̝̥̘̗̥̓̈̑ͬ̌͟v̶̛̛̹̗̱͛̊͗̎̓̋e̯̙̲̘͕͎̜̔̏́͝ś̗̠̬͈̗̤ͬ́

But your focus is elsewhere, as more fine wires(?) come ever closer to your eyes
They slip in and around, and the inside of your head w̸͕̱̣̒̂̀͞r̢̰̫̗͔̙̠̞̘̈́̓̓i̺ͫ͋̾ͧͯ̚͞t̢͖ͣ̐͛ͫ̉͊́̕h̢̢͙̻ͨ̐ͦ̽̿e̠͌ͮͨ͌ͯs̶̛̖͈̩ͮ̂ͭ͞

You freeze
You burn
Then you feel nothing at all.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at Sep 20, 2017 around 19:40

You should be overwhelmed, this kind of throughput would strain even a medium grade AI, but you're able to effortlessly cull relevant data from the tsunami flooding your senses.
One data point stands out above all the others however, a marker labeled simply "BE HERE". The timer next to it reads 2:00:00:000, then it starts to drop.

a) BE THERE
b) Get your bearings (this will take some time)

Have Blue fucked around with this message at Sep 20, 2017 around 19:46

There are no mirrors nearby, but when you glance at some condensation on the wall your visual processors combine the scattered reflections in the dewdrops into an image. It's fuzzy at first, but then resolves

COOLING FINS DEPLOYED
You feel something slide out of you back and a weight settle on your shoulders. You crane your neck and see
wings? They start glowing with waste heat in the still air. You flap(?) experimentally a few times and it seems to help, though you feel vaguely ridiculous.

OOC: OK I freely admit I thought this might be a bit of a clusterfuck, but I wanted you guys to at least have a go at finding out directly what your new toys can do, as well as manage them all. Roughly, runtimes define your available actions, and heat limits how long/how intensely you can do those actions. Runtimes have a short startup and shutdown delay, which means that you want to have critical functions (combat) locked and loaded to reduce delay. Leaving free runtimes is also good, because it means you only need to wait for the new startup (not startup new+shutdown old).

If this sounds like too much goddam hassle I can just abstract it on my end: give me a heat% and runtime% target and I'll stick to them. You'll still be able to tweak things specifically on occasion, the bookkeeping will be rolled into your choices and I'll handle the nitty gritty.

If you have any questions about this feel free to ask, I won't be (as) obtuse

Have Blue fucked around with this message at Sep 20, 2017 around 22:47

You stow your wings(?). It's not like there's space to fly down here and the air is too still to convect heat well. You wonder if there's a gun or something in one of your arms, but they still feel fleshy.

You consider consider taking the subway, but as you check your belongings, you don't find any kind of pass or money. No ID either. You do find an odd looking pistol:
There's no serial number. No other marks. Nothing at all. There's not a trace of them having been removed, just smooth, blank metal. Opening the cylinder, you find six gleaming cartridges. Satisfied if puzzled, you snap it closed, return it to its holster, and resume inventorying.

Led on by the AR line, you go up,
and emerge into the night from an access tunnel in an alley.
You're just about to head out of the alley when you catch a faint wash of heat coming from in front of you.

I don't even know where to begin because I have no programming knowledge beyond HTML and CSS, having typed out games from books in BASIC on the C64, and having once built a notepad with integrated calculator using a C++ tutorial.

That said, I'm enjoying seeing the results of using our in-head SSH program

Don't worry about it, regular English works too! Update eta later tonight